If a lawyer needs a lead plaintiff for a class action suit, post contact info here.

I am perplexed about how lost or stolen Verizon phones don't find their way back to Verizon. They are supposedly not capable of being reactivated with their hard-coded EIN numbers. So why does anyone steal them? If only Verizon and/or Assurion marketed the fact that they don't reactivate phones reported stolen and that they'd give a $50 reward for returned phones (paid by subscriber), we'd see a drop in Verizon phones grow

You're taking their comments at face value. GSM network locks can be removed by third parties. Granted, it's illegal to do so, but this is not something that's going to stop pawn shops, recyclers, or fencing operations.

That's why, I'm having trouble taking their comment at face value. They claim violent crimes in Australia went down in the last ten years. Is this really the case? Where are the actual statistics? Besides, I believe that violent crimes also went down in the United States within the last ten y

Would you be happy if someone was issuing a new registration to your stolen car?Such that it was fully legal and usable by someone else one stolen.That is effectively what the phone carriers are doing.

The phones have the equivalent of MACaddress/VIN number and are fully traceable to individual sales by the carriers. And they should not be allowed to reconnect to any network.

People are getting assaulted for this. Anyone been killed in a cell phone theft? Charge the carrier with accomplice in the murder.

What the carriers are doing is worse than the "guy who did not know but got conned by friends into driving the getaway car".

How is the carrier supposed to know that the device was stolen? What would stop you as the original owner from selling the device and then reporting it stolen? Just to piss off the new owner? Now the carrier has to setup this whole infrastructure to manage all this tracking and arbitration. With a car, there's a title that has to be moved around. You want that for cell phones???

It says how right there in the fine summary -- "Police chiefs like D.C.'s Cathy Lanier are asking U.S. mobile carriers to brick phones that are reported stolen..." Presumably a police report has some legal backing.

OK, then you have the police report. Once you have that, you ought to be able to get a court order easily enough. Police should not be able to walk in and say shut down this phone until they can show some evidence to a judge. But first, you need a law that defines under what circumstances such an order can be issued, and it should also make clear that the police, not the phone company, are liable when they shut down a phone improperly. Just shutting off a phone because the cops ask them to opens a phone com

How is the carrier supposed to know that the device was stolen? What would stop you as the original owner from selling the device and then reporting it stolen? Just to piss off the new owner? Now the carrier has to setup this whole infrastructure to manage all this tracking and arbitration. With a car, there's a title that has to be moved around. You want that for cell phones???

I think the used phone marketplaces already have a way to take care of this - seems like you'd handle this the same way you handle it if someone sells you a phone that won't power on. You go back to the seller for a refund.

Easy they don't have to. Simply give the users abilities through their websites to indicate that a phone has been lost or stolen which would then brick the phone the next time it receives a network update. The phone could display a message informing the person in possession of the device how to contact the rightful owner. You would need the ability to assign the phone to another user if it is sold to someone, giving them control over the phone.

There is no excuse for any portable electronic device not to have this ability especially since most of them require a service to get the full functionality of the device; iTunes for iPhones and iPads, Amazon for kindles, Cell carrier customer profiles, etc.

Who the heck buys a used cell phone? I admit I bought one back around 2006 but that was a different time, you see. These days, you can walk into any MetroPCS store (just to pick a random budget carrier) and buy an Android smartphone for $19. Okay, it's actually $49 with a $30 mail-in rebate but it's still a very small amount of money. How much of a discount could there possibly be on a used phone that would make it worth the risk of buying something that's been used and abused for months or years? If p

Those phones are not actually $49. They're subsidized and you can only get that price if you sign up for a two year contract. For people who don't make a lot of phone calls and are in range of WiFi 99% of the time, buying a used phone and then getting a prepaid plan is often substantially less expensive.

I'm amazed that some people haven't done the simple math to figure out the "free phone" scam.Phone $49 + 24 month contract at $100/month = $2449. This is not "free" in any sense of the word. It is a scam.Compare this to:Phone $500 + 24 month (no contract) at $50 (or less)/month = $1700.I personally have an even cheaper T-Mobile plan which costs me about $10/month since I use WiFi most of the time.My actual costs for past 24 months with my Android Nexus phone:Phone $539 + $230 service charges = $769.Plus, I can tether as much as I want so I've saved at least $500 in hotel WiFi access charges.This is the real way to get a "free phone"... not the phone company way.My phone is paid for and works great. I love it and it should keep me happy for quite a while.

If the person you are mad at gave you their cellular service account number, then they deserved to get their phone bricked. Otherwise, how is calling the service provider (presuming you know who they get service from), going to result in their phone being reported as stolen? Not to mention that the service providers would probably require a police report before bricking the phone. So now you are going to be charged with filing a false police report as well as wire fraud with malicious intent, depending on your jurisdiction. Smart move.

You could just as easily call the police and say that your car was stolen and give them the license plate of the person you are mad at so that they get pulled over then next time they pass a squad car. How many days have you spent in jail each time you got mad at someone? Maybe you should just stay in your mother's basement.

One could argue that the phone company technically "owns" more of the phone than you do because of subsidies. So in that case, "somebody" has to pay for a new SIM card so the phone company gets a customer.

Wouldn't that suggest you should be released from your contract of your phone is stolen?

If the phone is reported stolen, make the carriers responsible for any calls made by the handset. The victim has done the right thing by reporting the theft.

Make it an economic penalty if the company refuses to take action. It's the language they understand. Get the courts to back up the victim and the problem will go away in weeks if not days.

They already do that - when my phone was lost and someone made $300 Verizon purchases (downloadable games, videos, ringtones, etc), they refunded all of the fraudulent purchases. Since I had an unlimited phone plan there were no call charges, but I assume they would have refunded those charges as well.

But calls cost verizon almost nothing, so it's not really an economic penalty to them.

One could argue that the phone company technically "owns" more of the phone than you do because of subsidies.

One could try to argue that, but if you tried it in a court of law you would fail. The contract states that the physical phone belongs to you, and that you are still liable for the monthly rental fees on your contract even if your phone is lost or stolen. The "subsidy" is tied to the contract.

Although in the USA every boyfriend would be reporting their girlfriends phone "stolen" when she left them and it would be a support nightmare trying to keep it all straight.

No, you would just walk into a store and display the bricked phone and an Photo ID attached to the account and reactivate the phone. Plus, I would assume that you have to clearly show that you own the phone by giving the phone ID and then proving that it is attached to your account by telling them your account number, SS#, home address and all that personal stuff.

However, any person who shares that personal information with a boyfriend is an idiot.

Although in the USA every boyfriend would be reporting their girlfriends phone "stolen" when she left them and it would be a support nightmare trying to keep it all straight.

So you're saying that every boyfriend would file a false police report?? because I'm pretty sure that a police officer would know not to get in between such a dispute, and would just refer the boyfriend to the Small Claims Court system.

It's not like this is a new issue. When there is bad break up, there are always issues around cell phone bills, rental contracts/deposits, car leases/loans, and high penalty fees for early terminations of contracts that a couple may have gotten together (but that only one per

Agreed - there are a lot of needless and stupid laws out there, but this would not be one of them.

Another poster already made the analogy of cars and VINs - when a car is stolen it goes into the system and no DMV will renew registration and issue new plates for it. Pretty sure that was mandated by law. Imagine how much better it would work if it were instantly enforceable to the point of disabling the engine as soon as it was reported stolen (which is effectively what the carriers could do with technology

Let me restate something for you. This has already been tried out in the UK and Australia successfully. You don't think a problem like that would've been though of and solved by now? Or are you and the other 100 people dreaming up this same stupid scenario smarter than everybody in the UK?

If your phone gets stolen, you have to buy a new phone; most often this is done by people signing up for 2 more years to get the subsidized handset since few are willing to shell out $300+ for a smartphone. And whoever ends up with the stolen phone also signs up for service. So every stolen phone results in a new customer, an extended customer, and a (subsidized) phone sale.

But if they BRICK your stolen phone, then theft of stolen phones decreases, which hurts them because they'll have fewer new customers, fewer retained customers, and fewer phone sales.

That hurts profits, which is un-American. I'm shocked and appalled that someone in the public / government sector would suggest this! It might be time to privatize the police forces... that way the telecoms can stop relying on 3rd parties to enhance their sales and have the cops start stealing your phones directly.

If they can send a firmware update to the phone, then they can brick it. All they'd need to do is push a special (invalid) update only to that one user, who would then need to be dumb enough to accept it if the update can't be remotely forced.

Realistically though, I think bricking is overkill in this case - by definition if its bricked, the phone should not be recoverable if there was a mistake.

All they need to do is log the phones unique ID, add it to a list shared by all carriers using compatible technol

The second was "wait, there are phones that can be remotely BRICKED? 8-( "

Some carriers load up their own software, such as Verizon. Some also include(d) carrier-IQ in the smartphone, so it is possible to have enabled backdoor functions. Bricking is technically possible, even if they never did it.

Additionally if your phones unique ID was in a "stolen phone" database then it really shouldn't be allowed back on the cellular network. This is just one of those common sense things to expect, it's a bit surprising to find out the police had to request this, let alone had their reque

More stolen phones means more phones being replaced, also if you are on contract you can be liable for a huge bill. [telegraph.co.uk] The UK government had to actually bring in a law requiring carriers to block stolen phones (or threaten to legislate, I can't remember whether the carriers caved before the law was due to introduced).

Actually neither Sprint or Verizon will activate a phone not originally purchased from them. And neither will activate a phone reported stolen by an owner.
Honestly this seems like a problem strictly for phones with SIM cards.

So, while Verizon doesn't like people bringing in phones, resellers of Verizon service (Cricket, Virgin, etc.) are more than happy to do so. Verizon isn't in complete control of their own mobile service since a lot (25%? 30%? more?) of it is due to resellers selling access to the same towers.

Sprint absolutely won't activate any phone not sold by them (or at least wholesaled to someone by them). Verizon won't go out of its way to HELP you, but if you can figure out how to make some arbitrary CDMA phone work on Verizon, they won't stand in your way and prohibit you from using it, either.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think Verizon's grudging willingness to let you use any compatible phone is an artifact of the original Bell breakup & consent decree that prohibited Bell from requiring that customers

Sprint and Verizon don't need to brick the phones since they are CDMA networks and once those phones are reported stolen they are essentially black-balled from the network any way. T-Mobile, AT&T, and all other sim-card services would have to figure out some type of alternative in safe-guarding stolen phones.

And on further inspection it appears I read wrong. People get their blacklisted Sprint phones onto Boost by getting a cheapo boost phone and then cloning the ESN from that phone onto their blacklisted phone.

It's *possible* to change the ESN, but on the hierarchy of technically-minor things that can get you sent to prison for a really long time with minimal burden of proof on the part of the prosecution, you'd almost have to be criminally insane to do it, because you could end up serving 10+ years just for knowingly being in possession of a phone with a cloned ESN & making a call with it. And if the prosecution were feeling extraordinarily kind & let YOU off the hook because you convinced them you purch

Yup, if you look through Ebay, they're plenty of sellers offering "Bad ESN" Sprint phones (and if the ESN status isn't made explicitly clear, better ask before buying). Not all were stolen of course -- there are also phones from broken contracts and delinquent accounts.

No shortage of buyers apparently, and I have a hard time believing they're all being purchased for spare parts.

On the same carrier, maybe. But, for example, the iPhone 4s is a world phone (with CDMA and GSM), and if unlocked, etc. could be used on another company's network (in the US or another country). That's why any effective solution would need a database shared among all carriers, ideally globally so the stolen phones aren't just sent to Mexico, etc.

Here's what I don't get: if the carriers are capable of, even if unwilling to, bricking phones remotely, that must mean they know where those phones are at any given time, at least to the level of the nearest cell tower. If the phone is on the internet, they can be even more accurate than that. So, it seems to me, the phones themselves are built-in tracking devices that would work in law enforcement's favor; something that bricking would destroy.

Yeah, it's not like cops have more important cases to deal with than a petty theft, right? I'm pretty sure that solving a murder, for example, is a better way to spend their time than finding a $500 cell phone.

The use of the term "Bricking" is misleading in this context. What they're actually talking about is IMSI blacklisting. Every cell phone has a unique hardware ID much like a MAC address that can be blacklisted by the carriers.

If the phone is on the internet, they can be even more accurate than that.

Uh, say what? How does DHCP provide better resolution than knowing what cell tower you are communicating with??

Knowing a location to within a square mile - i.e. which cell tower - isn't very useful. However, most smartphones have a built-in GPS - if the carrier can remotely access the phone and provide the police with a GPS location, THAT would be useful.

If the phone is on the internet, they can be even more accurate than that.

Ask Google. Part of the "location" info that the phone reports is what wifi it's connected to and Google has been quietly mapping wifi locations. This is why my ipod with no cell service knows my location to within several hundred feet when I go to Google Maps.

It's completely possible, the problem is neither the carriers nor the police have any interest in doing it.

It's not in the carrier's interest to spend a dime helping to track down your phone - after mine was stolen (and then used to call several local numbers that I could clearly see in my statement!) AT&T told me it would be a waste of my time to notify the police. Unless you live in Mayberry they are just going to take your report, ignore it, and if they are honest tell you flat out they just don't h

"You just realized that you can be tracked whole connected to a cell network? Really?"

Uh, no, and I don't know how you inferred that. I was saying that, given these set of circumstances allowing tracking, why can't those circumstances be used to support actual law enforcement.

I agree that the device's worth itself is low on the list of priority, but tackling systematic crime and criminals shouldn't be. Chances are that if someone is willing to steal a phone like this, they are likely involved in other theft

As per TFA, we've had this in the UK for years. As the US networks say, it's not perfect as the IMEI can be changed on some phones and they can be exported abroad but its a hell of a lot better than nothing. Most mobile phone robberies are not organised exporters, they're people after a quick profit, often to feed a drug habit.

It's quite clear that the Mobile carriers are robbing us blind as citizens and as consumers, not to mention the abuses of our civil liberties. It's no surprise they aren't willing to help curtail similar actions.

I've worked developing cell phone operator software for almost a decade on 3 different continents (Not in the US though) and many different countries and as far as I know every single cell phone operator that I have worked for use the GSM standard practice of blocking the EMEI number which will cause the phone to be bricked on any GSM network in the world (AT&T & T-Mobile base their network on the GSM standard in the USA) and I was flabbergasted when a few months ago my 2 week old iPhone 4S was stolen AT&T would not do the same here.

Normally the procedure in other countries is that you just bring your cell phone operator the police report and they will immediately block the phone, basically turning it into a big media player (Assuming it is a smart phone). I can't understand how the operators here claim that they need to investigate technical solutions. This was designed and built into the original GSM standard that has been around since the late 1980:s and as far as I know the feature has also been in use since that time.

I totally agree with the article that it is unconscionable that operators here refuse to do this I am assuming to save a few bucks on cell phone subsidies.

they don't want to because it earns them money. they don't care if the phone is stolen as long as it brings in revenue. a few pissed off people getting odd bills after the phone is stolen doesn't concern them, they can wait out any customer dispute till they just give up and pay.

First off I think carriers should do this; but that being as it may I will say that this doesn't really work in either the UK or Australia - phone theft has not disappeared or become less common as a result.

It is easy to understand why when you consider how trivial it is to unlock phones and then sell them on to international customers, particularly in Europe where a blocked phone in the UK might still be worth upwards of 300 euro on eBay Germany or France.

Another interesting question is - what, if anything, has Apple done? They could very easily block phones interacting with its iTunes stores if the phone was reported stolen in any part of the world but they haven't. Why is that?

I know for a fact that Sprint (I worked for them for a while) creates a "lost or stolen" database. If your Sprint phone is stolen you report it to sprint and the "lost/stolen" service is placed on your phone. This renders the phone unusable: No calls, no messages. If you get a new phone, when you activate the new phone on the old number there is a check for "lost/stolen" and the SN/MEID goes into a database and that cannot be activated on sprint again. All allegations of carriers not concerned about the theft of phones is bogus.

My carrier is ATT. I know for a fact that they have exactly the same service although it is applied a little differently.

However, the phone would still be usable after hacking such as cloning. The carriers can only block the phone services on their network; not destroy the phone itself.

I forgot to add that the insurance company has the ability to locate phones through the GPS, and we have found phones through the "family locator service". Unfortunately, the gps is not necessarily precise enough, and by itself is not enough to get a warant.

Speaking strictly from an environmental standpoint, If they're bricked, they go straight in the trash can and into the landfills. A waste of precious materials and circuitry that could be recycled or reclaimed if the phone is recovered. Let's not pretend this technology doesn't exist. Between CarrierIQ, E911 and gps pings, it's not hard to recover it if the device is on.

That's why I wired my phone's flash circuit to an alternating stack of my grandma's nitro-glycerin patches and vintage cinema film soaked in 100% proof rubbing alcohol and stuffed between the lithium battery and the phone. Obviously I never use my flash when I take pictures, but I wrote my own self-destruct app that can only be activated by a text message from my other cell phone number, which I will not reveal for privacy and safety reasons.

The hardest part of the project was building the miniature spark plug to ignite the whole thing. I can't wait to get my phone stolen so I can try it out and see if it works.

If your *smartphone* (not feature phone) is stolen, in particular if it's Android or iOS, there are a number of solutions , other than retrieving it.

And most of those solutions can be easily worked around by a knowledgeable person, at the simplest level by just reflashing the firmware. This is not just theoretical - IMEI reprogramming used to be common place for stolen mobile phones, and there was a whole cottage industry based around cracking IMEIs so that stolen phones could be reenabled (to be fair, there were a few legitimate uses, but the illegal usage far outnumbered that). Now that the manufacturers made it harder to reprogram the IMEI, stolen phones that are blocked by the networks are only useful for export to countries that have the same network technology. So there is still a route to profit, but it requires more organisation than just being able to list the phone on ebay or sell it down the pub, which is what used to happen in the old days.

one could use without having to resort to calling police to "brick" your phone

The police have nothing to do with IMEI blocking, the network operator does the blocking, and will do so when you report the stolen phone to them, which you obviously need anyway to do as you are liable for all phone calls until the theft is reported.

You live in Sweden, so you probably don't have a lot of people sticking a gun in your back and demanding you hand over your iPhone. You might not care what happens to the phone, but you'd probably prefer not to be beaten up for it. If it was common knowledge up front that *all* stolen phones are useless (not some dumb "opt in" system as you seem to describe) there would be a lot less incentive to commit armed robbery over it.

And honestly, most people stealing your phone really don't give a shit about your

And for the ones that aren't deterred, you think a firefight in the street is preferable to carriers simply blocking the phones and making the mugging less attractive in the first place?

No, but as an adult with full cognitive faculties, I don't believe it's anyone's duty but my own to protect myself and my property... especially considering recent SCOTUS decisions, such as the one that determined that police have no duty to protect citizens. [nytimes.com]

Expecting others to do what you should be doing yourself belongs in the realm of childhood, IMO.

Castle laws, by definition require you to be in your home, vehicle, or place of business. Anywhere else and you have a legal duty to attempt deescalation and/or retreat. The name "castle law" is derived from the phrase "a man's home is his castle".

In this state, the castle laws also apply to "any property that you have permission to be on." That includes public areas where firearms are not prohibited by law (such as courthouses).

Contrary to what anti-2nd Amendment advocates want you to think, not all gun owners are psycho cowboys looking to get into a shootout; most of us are just law abiding citizens who know better than to expect the government to protect us.

Most would-be muggers are quickly deterred by the sight of the 1911 strapped to my hip. You want my celly? Come and get it.

Contrary to what anti-2nd Amendment advocates want you to think, not all gun owners are psycho cowboys looking to get into a shootout; most of us are just law abiding citizens who know better than to expect the government to protect us.

That's funny, because you sound exactly like a psycho cowboy looking to get into a shootout.

1. Unless you live in an open-carry state and literally have your firearm visible to the whole world, I doubt a would-be phone thief is going to have any idea that you're packing heat.2. Such a thief that would steal a phone might see a firearm as an even more valuable item to fence at his favorite pawn shop, and might go for that, especially if it's just hanging there on your right hip while your distracted with a cell phone in your right hand.3. What are you going to do i

I think what's worse is that most people just look at the runner and do nothing while the victim yells.

No offense, but what do you expect most people to do? Chase after the bastard and take him down like Chuck Norris or something? It's not like they're just standing there watching you getting beaten or raped. How are they going to know the other guy didn't track you down using a GPS app after you stole his phone?